Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist (born 11 December 1943) is a French academic, philosopher,A big splash from France's new wave from the right The Economist 14 July 1979 a founder of the Nouvelle Droite ( ) and head of the French think tank GRECE. Benoist is a critic of liberalism, free markets and egalitarianism.Trouble on the right; recent gains by the extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen have left conservatives and moderates confused about whether to imitate or attack him; France The Atlantic February 1985 Biography Alain de Benoist was born in Saint-Symphorien (now part of Tours, Indre-et-Loire) and attended the Sorbonne. He has studied law, philosophy, sociology, and the history of religions. He is an admirer of Europe and paganism. Benoist is the editor of two journals: Nouvelle Ecole ("New School") since 1968 and Krisis since 1988. His writings have appeared in Mankind Quarterly, The Scorpion, Tyr, Chronicles, and various newspapers such as Le Figaro. The New Left journal ''Telos'' has also published some of Benoist's work, which led to protests from some scholars on the editorial board. In 1978, he received the Grand Prix de l’Essai from the Académie française for his book Vu de droite: Anthologie critique des idées contemporaines (Copernic, 1977). He has published more than 50 books, including On Being a Pagan (Ultra, 2005, ISBN 0-9720292-2-2). Core Views From being close to French-Algerian movements at the beginning of his writings in 1970, he moved to attacks on globalisation, unrestricted mass immigration and liberalism as being ultimately fatal to the existence of Europe through their divisiveness and internal faults. His influences include Antonio Gramsci,The Marcuse factor, Modern Age 22 March 2005 Ernst Jünger, Jean Baudrillard, Helmut Schelsky and Konrad Lorenz.Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End? CLIO 1 January 1994 Against the liberal melting-pot of the US, Benoist is in favour of separate civilisations and cultures. He has written in opposition to Jean-Marie Le Pen, racism and antisemitism.Speaking Terms;Europe's Left And Right Are Too Divided To Even Talk About It Chicago Tribune 13 December 1993. He has opposed Arab immigration in France, while supporting ties with Islamic culture.Under cover story The Guardian (London) 14 August 1987 He favors concepts of "ethnopluralism," in which organic, ethnic cultures and nations must live and develop in separation from one another.Making hate safe again in Europe: right cultural revolutionaries. The Nation 19 September 1994. He also opposes Christianity as inherently intolerant, theocratic and bent on persecution.Intolerance, American-Style;Given This Country's History Of Religious Animosities, Thomas Fleming Writes Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania) 21 December 1997 De Benoist has made pointed criticism of the United States: "Better to wear the helmet of a Red Army soldier," he wrote in 1982, "than to live on a diet of hamburgers in Brooklyn."Paris shrugs off Mickey Mouse's cultural imperialism The Independent (London) 12 February 1991 In 1991, he complained that European supporters of the first Gulf War were "collaborators of the American order."FRENCH REVIVE A PASTIME: FRETTING ABOUT U.S. 'IMPERIALISM'; REACTION: TALK OF 'SECRET AGENDAS' SURFACES ON THE LEFT AND THE RIGHT. SOME CHAFE AT THEIR COUNTRY'S SECONDARY ROLE IN THE GULF. OTHERS WORRY ABOUT DIMINISHED EUROPEAN INFLUENCE. Los Angeles Times 15 February 1991. Benoist argues that heredity is dominant in forming an intellectual elite. In addition, he says egalitarianism is destructive because it ruins the superior qualities and genetic aristocracy in the human race. Benoist argues that Europe must return to its pre-Christian roots and uses the Indo-European model, such as Nordic, Celtic, Greek and Roman civilisations,France's new right in search of old European roots The Economist 1 September 1979 as an alternative to communism and capitalism. "We want to substitute faith for law, mythos for logos... will for pure reason, the image for the concept, and home for exile," he once wrote.Russia's bad dream;Zhirinovsky's fascism is not an isolated phenomenon The Boston Globe 19 December 1993 Benoist has said he opposed racism and violence, saying he is building "a school of thought, not a political movement."France;Ideas and bombs The Economist 23 August 1980 While he has complained that nations like the United States suffer from "homogenization," due to multiracial industrialization, he has also distanced himself from some of Jean-Marie Le-Pen's views on immigration. Benoist considers himself, however, neither left nor right-wing, and has recently tried to appear less radical: in his preference for Martin Heidegger over his first influence, Friedrich Nietzsche; his support of multiculturalism rather than disappearance of immigrants' identities (though he does not support immigration itself); his interest in ecology; and a less aggressive view of Christianity. He has said that he hopes to see free-debate and greater popular participation in democracy, although he is also critical of modern democracy. Benoist also promotes a type of federalism, in which the nation state is surpassed, giving way to regional identities and a common continental one at once. This would be distinct from what he sees as the consumerism and materialism of American society, as well as the bureaucracy and repression of the Soviet Union. This vision looks to a Europe of specific peoples, each with their own cultures and heritages.The disharmonic convergence: the far left and the far right as strange bedfellows,s Whole Earth Review 22 June 1988 His critics, such as Thomas Sheehan, argue that Benoist has developed a novel restatement of fascism. Roger Griffin, using an ideal type definition of fascism which includes "populist ultra-nationalism" and "palingenesis" (heroic rebirth), argues that the Nouvelle Droite draws on such "fascist" ideologues as Armin Mohler and Julius Evola in a way that allows Nouvelle Droite ideologues such as de Benoist to claim a "metapolitical" stance, but which nonetheless has residual "fascistic" ideological elements. Benoist's critics also claim his views recall Nazi attempts to replace German Christianity with its own paganism. Selected bibliography References *''Fascism'' edited by Roger Griffin, pp. 346–348. *''The Beast Reawakens'' by Martin A. Lee, pp. 208–213. *''Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890'' edited by Philip Rees, pp. 29–30. Further reading * Jonathan Marcus, The National Front and French Politics, New York: New York University Press, 1995, pp. 22–4, 151. *Michael O'Meara, New Culture, New Right Anti-liberalism In Postmodern Europe (2004). ISBN: 9781410764614 *Tomislav Sunic, Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right (New York: Peter Lang, 1990). ISBN 0-8204-1294-5 External links *The Alain De Benoist Collection *Three Interviews With Alain de Benoist *Archive of articles, many by or about Benoist *Les Amis d'Alain de Benoist, with several essays by de Benoist available in English. *Un ancien dirigeant de l’extrême droite représente la presse française by Pascal Dillane *Archive of articles (scribd.com) *Alain de Benoist about the fourth political theory *About Alain De Beonist's lecture in Moscow State University Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:People from Tours Category:French philosophers Category:New Right (Europe) Category:French writers Category:French essayists Category:Paganism Category:French neopagans bs:Alain de Benoist cs:Alain de Benoist de:Alain de Benoist es:Alain de Benoist eo:Alain de Benoist fr:Alain de Benoist hr:Alain de Benoist it:Alain de Benoist nl:Alain de Benoist pl:Alain de Benoist ru:Бенуа, Ален де fi:Alain de Benoist sv:Alain de Benoist